Content Length: Are Long Posts Really Better For SEO?

What’s The Ideal Article Or Blog Post Length For SEO?

When it comes to seach engine optimization/ SEO thousands of people have asked and are asking the same question. How many words should your web pages have for the best ranking? One of my article writers raised her concern that her articles might not be ranking well on the search engines because they were short. She said further that after the Penguin and Panda updates, that we should rethink our article marketing strategies, and that we should use long articles instead of the usual 500 words as it’s better for SEO. I thought this is an interesting point and decided to talk about it on today’s post.

Longer Content Is NOT Equal To Quality

While it’s true that a lengthy article allows for the writer to discuss his point of views elaborately, it’s not always true that they turn out useful. It’s the reader who determines if a post is useful or not and length has got nothing to do with it. If it were true that lengthy articles rank higher on the search engines, then we’d be seeing more and more websites and blogs using lengthy content.

Instead, for some keywords (especially local SEO and keywords) we’re finding pages of 300 words in Google’s first position outranking the other content that has 500, one thousand and in some cases even 1,500+ words.

Why is that?

What Makes An Article Useful?

The usefulness of an article may vary from one person to another but generally speaking, a useful post should be factual, informative, engaging, educational, relevant and well-written. If your article is short but meets all these characteristics, then I can guarantee for sure that your article will rank high on the search engines. Of course you would be needing some help from your followers and friends.

With the help of social media, a useful content page is able to reach a huge audience. These audiences who find your article useful then share it to their networks allowing for a larger audience reach. In the process, bloggers and webmasters who find your article useful might want to referrence it and link to it. Consequently, your article accumulates more links and lands a higher ranking on the search results.

On The Contrary, Long Posts May NOT Work

In today’s digital age, people need information quickly. They want answers right away, which is why long posts have the tendency to be ignored. It bores people. You know what happens when people skip your article and ignore it. Unless you are a good writer with the ability to sustain the interest and attention of your readers and hook them towards the end of your post, then perhaps a long article is not for you. Remember that your readers have short attention spans especially those who read online.

Short & Useful Posts

So, can a short article rank well on the search engines? It depends whether it’s useful or not. One thing’s for sure, short posts can be useful. Here are some tips to help you make your short articles useful to your readers: